Chapter 1

About the author:
I write completely of my own accord, of with my own stories and the occasional poem. I can't resist adding in a little bit of romance to all my stories, but I don't let it distract me and I still keep an element of mystery suspending along with action. Ho
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She was unlike anyone else. She was fiery and beautiful, she was careless and would do anything for him, to see him safe. With her pale, flawless skin and eyes like blue flames, with hair as silver and shining as snow, and with diamonds that glimmered just under the surface of her skin. She was wild, and untamed, but it's what he loved her for.

Hey guys! This is my seventieth draft so I hope you like it! No I'm kidding it's only my fourteenth, but still. Flames accepted.

Mel

A girl stood at the helm of a speed boat, yelling into the wind. The diamonds in her skin glittered like rain. The mortals around her called her crazy, but they didn’t know her. Her eyes stung and watered, but she let the tears fall, let them be carried away by the relentless sun. She pressed into the ever thickening wind, pushed the boat to sixty. She knew this was his game. She knew the howling in her ears was not natural, but if you looked closely, really close, you could see a tiny quirk to the top of her ears, and how the glitter on her skin was not glitter at all- it was diamonds, inlaid into her very being. And if you listened, you could hear how her voice carried over the wind, and how when she walked, her feet glided just over the surface of the ground. And if you knew this, and your brain was capable of more than just piecing sentences together, you would have known this girl was by no normal standards, human. Because Aero spoke to a boy who was sometimes there and sometimes not, and she had a certain demeanor about her that was rather serious, and only people more than persistent could really get to know her, and that was very few, so mostly Aero spent her time with the boy and the wind, and sometimes there would be no one there at all, so when she would cry, she would cry herself into oblivion. But other times the boy would be there, and he wouldn’t say anything, because for the sixteen years he’d known her she didn’t cry much and when she did, he should be there because they Cared About Each Other A Lot. So he would sit there with her, and sometimes she’d let him hold her and other times he wasn’t so lucky, and she’d even cringe away from his touch. “I’m sorry Leo,” she’d whisper, “I should be strong.” But at the end of the day, it was Leo who had made her so unlike anyone else. He’d Chosen her, so now they had to Be There for One Another. And sometimes she would yell at him for it, and say awful things, and he would yell back. They couldn’t do this very often, because Aero and Leo would wake up and a random city would be devastated by freak tornadoes. That’s what they were. Freak. Like the people who caused them and the lives they lead. Freak. And so life was hard with the boy and the girl because no one likes it when the country is devastated, apparently. But they stay together, like now, when Aero wants to crack her head open on the dashboard and Leo is laughing at himself. The jock and the bookworm stick together, because without one another, they are lost.

“Aero!” Leo called, his voice childish and whiny. He stared down at his shoes. “Tie them for me, will you, dear?” He grinned, knowing she hated that.

“Oh my god Leo you are 16 years old, tie your own shoes!” she yelled in reply, adjusting her own shoelaces on her turquoise converse, drawing around her eyes with some dark eyeliner. “And don’t call me dear again or you are in for some-“

“LANGUAGE PLEASE!” Aero heard Umi, a water spirit, and also Aero’s close friend call from downstairs. Aero stepped out of the room and into a ray of sunshine from the huge windows looming over her head. She met Leo by the top of the stairs, and they walked down shoulder-to-shoulder, squabbling about things that they didn’t have in common (which was, frankly, a seemingly impossibly long list) and by the time that they reached the foot of the stairs, Aero set off in a heated silence, charged with denial. The three high school kids shoved the food down their throats, Umi, Leo, and Aero.

At school, the atmosphere seems divided into categories that make the students different, but sometimes, Aero reasoned, the world is like that too. The upper-class, either beautiful, genius and/or rich, or the BGRs, as the lower-class, nerdy, misfit, rebellious, teens like to call them. Aero and Leo are like the CEOs in the latter category. The BGRs tend to keep to themselves in their carefully sectioned off parts of the auditorium, where they keep a whole row of seats empty next to them, because god forbid another un-sanitized human being even enter their precious personal space bubble, and in the cafeteria, where they sit to exchange gossip and cast pointed glances in the rebel’s direction like they’re some kind of unidentified species. But the rebels get their revenge. And boy, is revenge sweet.

It’s a beautiful day, noted Aero. The air is crisp and clean, the sun is done sulking behind the clouds, and there’s the morning dew sparkling on the grass. The wind is abundant, playful and restless. Aero looked behind her at Leo who is laughing, elbowing, joking… playful and restless.

It’s never been easy leading this life. But Aero can remember a time when she was just like everyone else. When she played on the same playground, and worked in the same classroom. When tiny diamonds weren’t inlaid in her skin.

She had so many friends, and her teachers loved her. Aero was witty and smart, and wore too many hats for her own head. She was thoughtful and notoriously full of herself, she listened to everyone’s problems and sometimes she would fix them, and sometimes not. Her name was Mel.

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